I Have a Scanner Now

…and I’ve always wanted to do something with this 1989 photo of Conlon Nancarrow giving a remarkably young and thin Kyle Gann a tour of a 16th-century convent in the Mexican town of Tepoztlan. For awhile Conlon and his wife Yoko (who took the snapshot) had a country home near Tepoztlan, and took me out with them to stay there. In a Tepoztlan restaurant I had one of the two best meals of my entire life: a mole dish with a shimmeringly complex sauce that contained 19 ingredients. I came home from that trip and wrote a tempo canon for two pianos, or piano and tape, at a 23:24 ratio, titled The Convent at Tepoztlan.

The other unforgettable meal was at a restaurant called Gatto e Volpe in Florence.